Arete
by Giant Woahbot
Summary: Taylor Hebert nearly died in the locker. By the time she woke up, she was a blank slate. Tabula Rasa. The Taylor-That-Was was now gone. In her place? A young, socially awkward young woman in a shattered body with a power. A power that only told her how to build one thing.
1. Chapter 1

Months. It had literally taken me months. After waking up in the locker, I hadn't been able to move anything below my waist. It had been difficult enough dealing with the small trauma. A month of therapy, and years more ahead of me, and that was just the psychological. Retrograde amnesia, they said. The physical therapy was almost worse. A lot of work to produce less than stellar results. They had assured me it was necessary. And I believed them. Or at least, thought that THEY thought it. In my case, though, it was a waste of time. I KNEW it. Since I'd awakened, I'd had a single image in my mind. A diagram that was clear as day.

A small grey cube with a red button, a little bigger than a shoebox. It only did one thing. I wasn't entirely sure what the ultimate purpose was, but I was convinced that it would fix everything for me. It hadn't been easy to make. I was quickly tired, physically weak, and my thoughts were sluggish. Still, Danny, nice man that he was had made sure I'd had whatever I needed to stay busy. If he was curious as to what I was working on, he held his peace. Apparently, he was Taylor's father. Still, for his assistance with this, I vowed to repay him. I didn't remember the Taylor she was supposed to be, and couldn't return the girl he knew. Still, I knew I could make him proud of this new thing I had become. I just had to fix the shattered wreck of m body first.

So, with a deep breath, I pressed the button. Smoke wafted up from the little box, followed by a loud screeching sound. The table trembled, sparks spewing from the poorly connected sides. The desk it sat upon blackened where it touched, and an awful green light seeped from the corners. With a sharp banging sound, the front of the little box fired off, leaving behind a tiny round sphere no larger than a marble sitting in the guts of the box.

Not surprisingly, I heard a loud thumping sound as, downstairs, Danny came pounding up them. Time was limited, then. If he saw me with it, he'd try to stop what I was about to do next, and I couldn't have that. So with a fatalistic shrug, I fumbled the gray marble into my mouth, swallowed painfully, and lay back. I had just enough time to see Danny's panicked expression before I lost consciousness. My last thought before everything went dark was to consider that I just may have handled that poorly.

***

I was beginning to despise waking up in the hospital. This was only the second time, and already the profusion of nurses and the occasional doctor making their way in and out of the room at all hours of the day was wearing thin. Test after test served only to tell me what I already knew: I was okay. The wooden-faced Protectorate leader... Armsmaster, I think his name was, had interrogated me for the better part of an hour before warning me the of the dangers of untested 'tinker tech,' followed by a heavy-handed attempt to get me to join his team of young parahumans. Another feather in his cap, I suspect.

Regardless, his appeals failed to add up to anything, and soon enough he was chased off by the hospital staff and, I suspect, by that interesting throbbing vein in Danny's forehead. I cared very little for any of it, anyway. After listening to waffle between nearly sobbing and berating me for the better part of an hour, I lost patience and closed my eyes to begin messing with the interface of my 'invention'. Eventually, Danny assumed I had fallen asleep, and I chose not to disabuse him of the notion as it allowed me the peace to figure this out.

**… Nano-colony distributed. Finished.**  
**… Diagnostic. Complete.**  
**… Initialize VirtuOS? Y/N**

I had tried a myriad of things, twitching my eyebrows, mouthing the letters, moving my fingers, even crossing my eyes, and thinking 'YES' and 'Y' as hard as I can. None of that particularly WORKED. Eventually, though, through trial and error, I managed to figure out the stupidly simple method of activating my device. I mentally visualized clicking on the 'Y' and my world faded until I was surrounded by nothing more than a soft blue light, and scrolling words and numbers. Eventually, it all came to a stop, words scrolling across my vision once more.

**WARNING! MULTIPLE DEFICIENCIES DETECTED!**  
**REPAIR OF NERVOUS AND MUSCULOSKELETAL SYSTEMS ADVISED.**  
**Proceed? Y/N**

It took me almost no time at all to click 'Y,' and then I laid back to close my eyes, as the blue light faded, and a burning sensation covered my flesh. My eyes rolled up in my head, a screech ripped from my lips, and then consciousness faded. I had just enough time to wonder, idly, if the Taylor-that-was would've been so impulsive. I suspected, though, she would've resigned herself to the hand fate had handed her meekly. Allowed herself to be swept up in events passively until they grew beyond her hand.


	2. Chapter 2

Well. That hadn't been pleasant. I awoke with a visibly incensed Danny staring down at me. On the upside, I no longer felt the virtually constant pain I'd been in since awakening in the hospital the first time. Additionally, my frame felt responsive and light, though only in comparison to its usual heavy nonresponsiveness. After a moment in luxuriating for a moment in the feeling of a body without any pain, I regretfully tuned into Danny's current tirade.

"... be so irresponsible Taylor?" Crap. He was going to expect some response. "It worked." Based on the throbbing vein in his forehead, I suspected that this was not the most appropriate response to quell his ire.

"I'm... sorry?" Based on his facial expression, this was not actually the response he wanted. We stared at each other for a very long time, eyes blinking every now and then. Then he sighed, threw his hands up, and stormed out of the room, muttering to himself. With a sigh, I turned my attention inward.

**WARNING! MULTIPLE DEFICIENCIES STILL PRESENT!**  
**To fix, please pick from the list below:**  
**1\. Muscular Atrophy.**  
**2\. Lost balance and proprioception.**  
**3\. Congenital Myopia.**

After a moment's thought, I mentally clicked on the second choice, and a bar with a single number 'O%' appeared in the upper left-hand corner of my vision. Almost immediately, I felt nauseous as nerves all over my body began to tingle. The room proceeded to spin around me, ensuring that once again, a rough day had gotten worse. I wasn't happy about this part. I'd gladly endure it though. After all, when I looked down at my foot, I was delighted to find I could wiggle it. I just didn't have the strength or coordination to do it.

Still, the increasingly intense sense of vertigo and the rising urge to vomit wasn't a lot of fun. This was probably going to make me irritable.

***

By the time I was discharged again, I was walking under my own power, and my vision was perfect. The regrowth of my muscles had left me sore for the better part of the day and ordering seconds and thirds at every meal, while the itching of my eyes as their vision was repaired was nothing short of agony.

Still, my rapid recovery was the talk of the staff with some of them likely guessing that I was a young parahuman. Let the staff talk. HIPPA and a myriad of laws protecting minors and young capes ensured they wouldn't out me any more than I already was by having Brockton Bay's preeminent tinker visit me personally.

I suspect the previous Taylor would've marveled at such a responsive body. The little pudge at my belly was gone, consumed for calories and materials to get my musculature up to the bare minimum to operate, and I still wasn't particularly strong. Truth be told, I was still weak by almost any standards. With a mental command, I called up the interface.

**... No deficiencies detected. VirtuOS ready.**  
**Please input desired enhancement.**

It took me a moment to figure out how to type with my brain. Once I did though, I tried an easy one and selected my memory. After all, if one wants to improve the fastest, one improves their tools first. Bootstrapping was going to be the key here, and therefore I had to be patient.

**Confirmed. Upgrading host 'Memory.'**  
**Upgrades available: 'Good, High, or Peak Human'?**

I selected 'Peak Human.' Why not, after all? Why settle for a lesser version of perfection. Thankfully, the interface was designed to be helpful, so it offered the information I needed upfront almost as soon as I'd wondered it.

**'Peak Human' selected. Be aware, time to improvement will be significantly increased due to skipped milestones. Proceed Y/N?**

I clicked 'yes' mentally. I had no idea exactly how long it would take, and the interface wouldn't tell me. That said, it needed to be done. All too many plans were derailed by lack of information. I wished to be a hero. That much hadn't changed from my predecessor. I just wasn't sure I wanted to do it with strings attached or limits on my behavior. I wanted to do it my way.

So I needed information, and I needed to be able to RETAIN that information. This time, thankfully, there was no tingling, scratching, soreness or anything else, physically, as I headed to the library.

***

I was wrong of course. No free rides, right? It started the next day when I was on my way to the library. Headaches. Pounding ones in fact, complete with lovely little tress of light in my vision. On my walk to the library, every sound had me flinching and twitching, and all the light around me seemed so bright. When I arrived, I signed up to use the internet and then sat down to catch my breath from the walk.

Naturally, when my turn arrived, the first thing I looked up was my symptoms. Sure enough, I was having a migraine. So. That was a thing apparently. Mental enhancements got me a massive headache. I suppose I knew what my next upgrade was going to be after this ordeal was over: pain tolerance.

Once that was done, I turned my eye to the electronic card catalog until I found the section that contained textbooks, and after a moment to nose around, I got up and trundled over to the shelves I wanted. After selecting a handful of books, I took them to the desk, getting a raised eyebrow from the severe, elderly-looking woman behind the counter,"Research?"

"Something like that," I answered. She merely nodded, took my card, and scanned the books I'd shown her through. After sliding them into my backpack, I head over to the nearest park, pausing to buy a dollar pair of sunglasses in a convenience store, and then found a convenient tree to settle under and read.

Standing out too much was the surest way to attract attention. After the winter break, I was set to go back to school, and I was VERY far behind. If I didn't graduate on time, it'd be another bump in the road for me. Still, I couldn't be wasting all my time studying and trying to absorb the information. A little work, though, and I'd be able to almost snooze through classes with little to no disruption to my future. Especially with VirtuOS enhancing my abilities bit by bit. Already, the information was taking hold with more ease than I could remember before.

I stayed there until the sun began to fall behind the horizon. By the time I made it home, my head was pounding, but I'd learned a lot, and not just what was in those books.

**Reading Speed changed from 'Good' to 'High.'**  
**Reading Comprehension changed from 'Good' to 'High.'**


End file.
